1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to food products. In particular, the present invention relates to an edible barrier component useful in packaged or wrapped food products.
2. The Prior Art
At present, at least two significant consumer trends influence consumer preference for food products. Consumers increasingly are eating more either away from home or even if at home, away from traditional, sit down full course dinners. Rather, consumers are eating more and more "on the run" whether at home, in work or pleasure activities. The second trend is for consumer preference for food products perceived as being more nutritious than conventional snack items.
Due to these two trends, one particular type of food product enjoying greatly increased consumer popularity is yogurt. Recently, certain styles of yogurt containing partially puffed cereal grains and fruit mixed throughout the yogurt have also been popular. Such products provide relatively crunchy or chewy materials dispersed in a smooth or creamy medium. While popular, such products require specially prepared cereal grains and a fruit in order for the grain and fruit products to maintain their desirable texture while in intimate admixture with the moisture containing yogurt.
Notwithstanding the advantages that such products enjoy over competitive products, it would be desirable to be able to provide products containing two even more widely dissimilar components as a convenience item. Such products, for example, could include yogurt or pudding with ready-to-eat cereal, soup with crackers, cake and ice cream. However, due to the difference in the properties between the two components, physical contact therebetween for extended periods of time result in migration or penetration problems leading to the degradation of the desirable properties of each ingredient.
Among the various potential gradients in such composite food articles, moisture migration remains the most significant problem area. While throughout the remainder of the specification below, particular attention is addressed to the problems of moisture migration and moisture penetration of coating or barrier compositions, the skilled artisan will appreciate that the present invention also finds usefulness in the problems associated with additional migration or penetration problems including oxygen, acidity, color, oil and protein.
The prior art, of course, includes numerous examples of inedible barriers in the form of laminates having moisture impermeable coating (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,170,568 issued Feb. 23, 1965 to P. H. Carter). Also known are edible containers having an inedible internal moisture barrier (see, U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,440 issued Sept. 18, 1984 to H. M. Bank). U.S. Pat. No. 4,390,553 (issued June 28, 1983 to Rubenstein et al.) discloses an edible food container with a fat coating of its inner surface.
The prior art has included a number of packaging developments to provide two compartment packages to separate dissimilar components until admixture immediately prior to consumption. In particular, U.S. Pat. No. 4,233,325 issued Nov. 11, 1980 to Slangan et al.) disclosed an ice cream package including a compartment for heating syrup. However, the barrier between the syrup and the ice cream is not edible. Thus, the package compartment housing the syrup must be removed entirely and the syrup poured onto the ice cream in the lower compartment. It is possible to make the supporting member of the compartment pierceable or tearable allowing for penetration thereof by, for example, a spoon, the contents of the upper container could then be allowed to fall or drain into the lower compartment. However, such construction suffers from several disadvantages. First, there is a trade-off between support strength of the barrier and the pierceability of the barrier. Second, for barriers which are more readily pierceable, fragments of the barrier material can be intermixed with the food. Not only is such admixture aesthetically unpleasant but consumption of the pieces of ruptured membrane material could possibly result in serious health problems.
Another two compartment package with an edible barrier to separate dissimilar components is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,714,070 (issued July 26, 1955 to A. E. Welch) where an ice cream cake or cone body is used to separate an upper sauce component from a lower ice cream component in a microwaveable cup. However, such barriers have been found ineffective to prevent moisture migration between the two components over extended storage times even though simple physical separation of the components may be achieved. Also, the ice cream cone material loses its desirable crispness over time due to the moisture migration.
Another edible barrier is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,600,566 (issued June 17, 1952 to F. W. Moffett) which affords a frozen food package, such as an ice cream package whereby a body of ice cream or frozen dessert and a body of topping or syrup adapted to be liquified upon heating is separated by an edible or other insulating barrier or layer as for instance, a cake-like layer positioned between the ice cream and body of topping material. The cake-like layer acts to keep the syrup or topping hot. Unfortunately, such cake-like barriers, while edible, provide little resistance to moisture migration between the two food components. Thus, at best, such known barriers can be used only with products wherein the components differ only slightly with regard to such important features as water activity or could only be used for frozen foods. Additionally, the cake-like layer provides only modest support strength. Thus, the cake-like barrier could not be used with regard to two-component food products, the major weight fraction of which is a moist food, e.g., yogurt and a minor portion of which is composed of individual pieces of dry, frangible particulate material, e.g., ready-to-eat whole wheat flakes.
Still another problem can exist with edible barriers. If the barriers are fabricated from materials of sufficient strength or rigidity to support heavy amounts of product or which resist breaking or disruption upon ordinary handling, then the barriers may be difficult to pierce when desired or can be broken up into bite sized pieces only with great difficulty.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide edible barriers for composite food items.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide edible barriers with enhanced structural support.
Another object of the present invention is to provide edible barriers of enhanced structural support which are resistant to moisture migration.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide strong edible barriers resistant to moisture penetration but which nonetheless are easily breakable by the consumer into bite sized pieces in preparation for consumption of the article.
Another object of the present invention is to provide edible barriers which maintain crispness over extended storage times even when used to segregate high moisture food materials.
A further object of the present invention is to provide composite food articles having two or more phases of different food materials separated with edible barriers which are effective to prevent migration between the different food materials.
It has been surprisingly discovered that the above objectives can be realized and superior edible barriers for composite food products obtained by providing an edible laminate comprising a support substrate being sandwiched between layers of edible films of high moisture impermeability.